"Honey, when does that orb ever glow anything but orange?"  This is how my wife entered my home office this morning.  She was referring to my Ambient Orb, a gift she gave me years ago to make my office a little more colorful...

I recently came across a 1976 interview with Ben Graham for the CFA journal.  It was very interesting to hear his reflections on the financial industry in his twilight years.  What struck me was his thinking on simplifying the investment process and a somewhat cynical view on the industry and its participants.

Contrarian investing has always been a fascination of mine.  From the first time I read Humphrey Neill's classic book The Art of Contrary Thinking, I've been watching magazine covers, newspaper headlines (above the fold, of course) and anything else that can suggest what the masses are thinking...

I've read Shane Parrish's Farnam Street blog for years, and as a result have developed a real appreciation for Charlie Munger's approach to investing and thinking and life. I'm so glad I finally read Shane's transcript of Munger's Herb Kay Memorial Lecture from 2003. I'd encourage you to take the time to read the entire speech, as he covers so much ground with his signature mix of dry humor and healthy cynicism.

The book Quantitative Momentum by Wes Gray and Jack Vogel describes in detail how to build a momentum model.  Backed up with the history of financial analysis, limitations of momentum investing and tons of backtested data.  Thumbs up.

Recent upward moves in Telecom and Utilities force me to revisit two relatively boring sectors.  There are plenty of more attractive sector charts out there, but the IYZ and XLU are both worth a second look.

I started my weekly ETF screen a bit early this week to see how things were playing out before the weekend.  I had a feeling it might look fairly rosy, but it was a little over top rosy this time...

JC Parets, a very capable technician as well as fellow wine aficionado, wrote a great post on All Star Charts comparing sommeliers to technical analysts.  Specifically, he discussed the methodical way in which sommeliers evaluate a wine during a tasting to the methodical way that a technical analyst reviews the weight of the evidence...

Fantastic article from Mindful magazine this morning about combatting confirmation bias.  As a reminder, confirmation bias is where you first develop a thesis ("I'm bullish.") and then you look for evidence to support this opinion...

Overwhelmed with the markets and life in general?  Remember Rule Number Six!  A simple message to not take life too seriously.